Cross-posted from my Africa Update newsletter. We’ve got positive masculinity in Mali, the triple-taxed business owners of Somalia, a bridge on the River Congo, the perils of not participating in the census in Kenya, and more.

Southern Africa: Malawi is considering an onerous bill for the registration of NGOs, with penalties including years in jail or fines of $20,000 for those who don’t comply. Congrats to Shamila Batohi, who just became the first woman to serve as South Africa’s chief prosecutor. Zambian firms are willing to pay more taxes if they actually see improvements in public services afterwards. In Zimbabwe, urban authorities are promoting cremation as room in cemeteries runs low, but many people are concerned that their dead ancestors will be angered if they’re not buried properly.

Here’s the latest edition of my Africa Update newsletter. We’ve got Mali’s 35-year old foreign minister, the dodgeball association of South Sudan, accountability for Mozambican mayors over gay rights, the future of nuclear power on the continent, and more.

Southern Africa: At some South African universities, nearly 80% of black students report that they sometimes don’t have enough to eat. A South African court has ruled that marriages between Muslim couples in the country must be legally registered and not simply recorded with religious authorities, giving women legal protection in the event of divorce. Zimbabwe’s harsh laws criminalizing the transmission of HIV are discouraging people from coming for testing and treatment.

A hopeful headline from Mozambique, showing a newspaper asking mayoral candidates in Nampula how they plan to combat discrimination against gay people (via Tom Bowker)

I haven’t properly written up my observations from last year’s African Studies Association meeting yet. In reviewing my notes, I found that one of the themes that cut across the various panels I attended was the unexpected uses of non-state power. By this I mean the exercise of (potentially) coercive power by non-state actors in ways that challenge the state’s monopoly on violence or taxation. Here’s a snapshot:

Steven van Bockstael noted that most artisanal mining in Liberia is done without the permission of the central government and is therefore illegal, but that miners also frequently ask the permission of land owners, chiefs, and even local government officials before proceding. This type of “highly personalized” authorization clearly has value to the miners, but also means that they’re in a constant process of negotiation with officials.

Joshua Walker made a similar observation about diamond mining in Mbuji-Mayi, saying that artisanal miners often pay a daily fee to local militias to gain (illegal) access to land owned by parastatal mining agencies. Note that this is actually a bit at odds with the “conflict minerals” narrative of militarized mining in the Congo, which seems to assume that rebel groups operate the mines themselves, rather than simply charging others for access.

Komlan Agbedahin observed that colonial borders have done less than expected to shape the exercise of chiefly power in central Ghana and Togo. Local chiefs still engage in cross-border power struggles, and the religious spheres of local gods often cross borders as well. Less surprisingly, he also found that local border agents frequently supplemented their salaries by cutting holes in border fences and charging people who wished to cross.

Nicole Eggers noted that Christian prophets in South Kivu often exercise real political power, sometimes to the point of challenging the mwami or other local authorities. Part of the reason for this is that the South Kivutien mwamis’ power is typically tied to the land, and diminishes if they’re forced to flee due to violence, while the prophets’ power is seen as “heavenly” rather than local, and thus not so easily diminished by flight.

Globalization is often portrayed as something that is imposed on people in Africa, not as a process which they can seek to mediate or even actively participate in. Nina Sylvanus has a piece on Togolese imports of Chinese-made wax print fabrics (gated) in the April edition of African Studies Review which challenges this narrative:

[Fabric trader Antoinette] Mensah’s first experiences with the Chinese were in 1995. She had brought a set of samples, mostly non–wax prints, to Bangkok, and she wished to reproduce them as economically as possible. She met a Thai entrepreneur who introduced her to a colleague in Hong Kong who was the head of several textile manufacturing units. She worked with this Chinese manufacturer in Hong Kong for several weeks, and recalls his many misconceptions about African tastes. She had to point out repeatedly, for example, that her concern for her profit margin did not mean that she would accept goods that were shoddy or cheap… [The] fabrics met with immediate success [in Togo]… [However, by] 1996, she was confronted with a … challenge: a group of Togolese traders had her prints reproduced in India and copies of [her] fabrics entered the market.